As much as I hate to admit it, there are scores by James Horner that I find difficult to appreciate, this being one of them. And I actually don't find it just hard to appreciate, I really don't like it. Horner's detractors who claim that he overdoes it with dramatic scores aren't always too far from the truth, which is revealed in this album. I won't say that it's a completely worthless score, but its real problem lies in the fact that it *must* be heard in the context of the film. Hearing it on it's own will do little for die-hard soundtrack collectors or even Horner fans, and will certainly do nothing for average collectors. There are a couple good parts, I particularly like "Goodbye and Godspeed," but it's too little to late to save the soundtrack as a whole. Some redemption may be found in the shorter cues like "The Wedding," which contains a lovely soft melody ocasionally assisted by piano.

There are a couple decent themes, but they are hard to pick out at the slow tempo the CD craws along at. If you want to purchase a decent Horner score from recent years, don't make it this one unless you're a big Horner fan, and even then you might want to avoid it. For being the score to immediately follow Titanic in Horner's career, I'm very dissapointed.

DeepImpact is Copyright 1998 Sony Classical. This review is written by and is the property of Isaac Engelhorn and does not reflect the opinions of Tripod.